Tuesday, February 13, 2018

I want them contending as often as possible. To that end I want to see them make smart decisions. Going “for broke” every year is not a sustainable model.

You may be reading this and thinking, “Well, yes. But so what?” (You might also think I’m an idiot, but I hope not.) The “so what” is this: I’ve spent too much of the last three years valorizing losing in order to win and praising teams for making marginal improvements when wholesale advances were appropriate. Some of it has been ...

Monday, February 12, 2018

This is an overreaction. If the players want to reopen the agreement they’d better be prepared to extend the agreement a few years past the current one. They’d also better be prepared to make big concessions in other areas. The owners have an agreement they like, to think they will make big concessions for the “good of the game” is unrealistic.

Going forward there are different ways the players can push for a bigger piece of the pie. One idea that I don’t like is minimum payrolls. Such a ...

Edward Grant Barrow, former president of the International League, was appointed manager of the Boston Red Sox yesterday. He will succeed Jack Barry, who relinquished the job to enlist in the Naval Reserves as a yoeman [sic].
...
Barrow already has several deals in the air. He says he will immediately strengthen his team through the purchase of the best talent he can purchase from the International League.

However, there were several curveballs that forced Giants’ players to think outside the box, including one from a fan who asked a trio that included catcher Buster Posey, reliever Cory Gearrin and starting pitcher Jeff Samardzija whether they think baseball players should have a role in voicing their political opinions like football and basketball players have in recent years.

The question temporarily stumped Gearrin and Posey, so as his teammates waited, Samardzija decided to jump in and ...

Confronted with the argument that maybe Williams, DiMaggio, and especially Babe Ruth wouldn’t have been as good had they been required to play against black players, most fall back on the argument that Bonds, Clemens and their steroid-enhanced contemporaries broke the rules, while Ruth and company merely played within the boundaries of the rules as they existed at the time.

In other words, while shameful, segregation was “just the way it was.” The implicit argument here is that we ...

“I describe Erik’s approach to baseball as obsessively curious, and he’s helped many of us look at the game through a more complete lens. His passion and creativity touch every branch of the department, and he possesses a constant need to seek new and more information. He’s essentially self-taught, and has a detailed understanding of every role, from scout to analyst.’‘

Eric Hosmer has been a bit of a lightning rod this winter. The free agent first baseman is coming off a strong season, yet plenty of pundits are less than enamored with his offensive profile. Couple the launch angle revolution with an increased acceptance of strikeouts, and Hosmer has become, in the eyes of his detractors, somewhat of a square peg in a round hole.

Speculation is, maybe MLB doesn’t want talk of a $500 million contract, which first appeared on FanRag about Bryce Harper, who along with Manny Machado heads next year’s once-in-a-generation free-agent class (for now). Maybe they want Giancarlo Stanton to remain the record-holder, the agents suggest.

Edit: Didn’t Frazier say he wanted to stay in New York? If that was truly his preference, this would explain why the Mets got a hometown discount.

Saturday, February 10, 2018

For half a century, doctors believed that Ruth had cancer in his larynx, which grows from the voice box in the throat. The hoarse speech, as well as Ruth’s prolific consumption of cigarettes and alcohol, supported this theory. But by evaluating Ruth’s private autopsy reports, Bikhazi showed that Ruth actually had nasopharyngeal cancer, a rare illness that starts behind the nose. More than 70 years after his death, the distinction might seem minor, but the takeaway is staggering: Ruth, ...

Darvish and the Cubs agreed to a six-year deal on Saturday that guarantees the right-hander $126 million, two sources told MLB.com’s Jon Paul Morosi and Carrie Muskat. The Cubs could not immediately confirm the signing because it was pending a physical exam.

Darvish’s $126 million contract would be the largest free-agent deal so far this offseason. Sources told MLB Network insider Ken Rosenthal that the contract includes incentives that could push its total value to ...

You think you’ve ingested (or written, in my case) enough spring-training “Best shape of my life” stories to last several lifetimes. That you’d rather see Tony Clark and Rob Manfred exchange nonsensical statements about the dormant free-agent market than listen to one more ballplayer tell you about his life-changing winter.

You need to give these tales of reformation and reinvention another chance.

Thursday, February 08, 2018

What else is there to talk about? I’ll note that in scoring, the Cubs were #2 NL in 2nd half 2016, #2 for all of 2017 (Colorado) and #1 (by a lot) for 2nd half 2017. I’d love even more but more of the same is fine with me.

When the eastern league gets to the point where it will really decide whether it will operate or suspend in the coming baseball season, perhaps the first matter which will receive its consideration is the suggestion of manager Jack Mack, of the [Worcester] Boosters, that the teams be cut to 13 players.

Such action will give every team in the league two backstops and four pitchers, which manager Mack thinks ought to be all any team might ask to have.

Finally, it’s interesting to note exactly when Mejia got himself into his biggest messes on the mound. You might think that a pitcher struggling with control would walk more hitters with men on base, but these situations were actually where Mejia clamped down. His greatest struggles came in low leverage situations in which he had a BB/9 of 5.34, as opposed to 1.29 in high-leverage situations. To put this another way, Mejia had a BB/9 of 5.73 ...